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August 30, 2020
I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well, staying healthy, and looking out for your neighbors and friends.
As I know many of you are, I find myself deeply saddened and frustrated by last night’s shooting in downtown Portland that resulted in the death of a young man not yet officially named as I write this.
I’ve written and spoken before about our need to find a way to continue to draw attention to the systemic racism that continues to pervade our society without having to resort to acts of violence in order to do so. At every level of government and in every one of our institutions, we must remain committed to change, committed to doing the work needed to bring it about.
I don’t agree with the violent acts that a few individuals are committing in the midst of otherwise peaceful, though determined protests, presumably to draw attention to the urgency of the moment. It should not take people throwing rocks, setting fires, and provoking what is all too often excessive force by the police in response night after night.
I don’t want to minimize the legitimate feelings of anger, frustration, and outrage. When we see Jacob Blake shot in the back seven times in Kenosha at the same time that people are saying it’s time to put Black Lives Matter behind us, when we see a young vigilante murdering people in cold blood in response to right-wing calls to action, we should all feel frustrated and outraged. We should not and must not remain complacent in the face of these outrageous actions.
What we really don’t need is the way that these challenges have been coopted, politicized, and ramped up into a whole other dimension of violence.
The President’s actions in this regard have certainly been shameful, as they encouraged if not directly provoked the outsiders who came into Portland last night intent on hurting others. The same could be said for other outsiders who are painting distorted pictures of what is going on in our city, rather than reproduce high-quality, local on-the-ground reporting, all for their own ends. But it’s not enough to just criticize Donald Trump or anyone else.
Obviously, we need to find out who committed this murder and hold them responsible. We need the truth about what led up to this and whether or not steps could have been taken to prevent it. Once we learn the truth, we need honest discussions of what that truth means for us going forward.
OK, on to the newsletter. For various reasons we weren’t able to get Saturday’s newsletter out, since today’s combines information reported yesterday and today. Since it’s the weekend, you’ll find only partial reporting on some of the metrics tracking coronavirus in Oregon. Rather than providing information about positive test results alone, over the weekend OHA combines those numbers with the relatively small number of those who are presumed to be positive based on their symptoms and close proximity to someone who has tested positive, but whose test results have not yet come back. But it still gives us a good idea of what’s going on.
We also don’t get hospitalization numbers over the weekend, so we won’t know what the rate of increase is till Monday. Deaths are reported, however: yesterday OHA reported the death of seven Oregonians and today another four.
As I’ve been doing on Saturdays for a while, I’m also taking the opportunity to look back at what’s going on in our individual counties on a week-by-week basis over the last month. The number of new cases and positivity rate has slowly, gradually been going down for the state as a whole in recent weeks, but we continue to see wide variation from county to county.
And as I’ve been doing on Sundays, you’ll find updated information about how COVID is affecting people of different ages.
TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE
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Positive Cases: OHA reported on Saturday that 252 additional Oregonians tested positive or are presumed positive (see below for definition) for COVID and on Sunday that an additional 269 did, for a total of 521 for the two days. (OHA does not report positive test results alone over the weekend. I’ll be able to readjust the numbers on Monday to remove the presumed positives.) The cumulative total for those testing positive and presumed positive since Friday is 26,554.
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Total Tests: The number of reported tests has increased by 6,261 on Saturday and 4,495 today, for a total of 10,756 since Friday. Today’s increase in total results also includes presumed positives in the total results. The cumulative total is now 553,345.
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Ratio: The percentage of positive cases in Oregon since Friday is 4.8% of total results. The national percentage today is 5.3%.
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report 7 additional deaths due to the coronavirus on Saturday and 4 more today. You can read more about those we’ve lost further down in the newsletter. The total number of COVID deaths in Oregon is now at 458.
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Hospitalized: OHA does not report on hospitalizations over the weekend. The cumulative number of those who have been hospitalized with COVID thus remains at 2,108.
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Presumptive Cases: OHA is including “presumptive COVID-19 cases” in its daily reports, consistent with recently amended guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A presumptive case is someone who does not yet have a positive PCR test but is showing symptoms and has had close contact with a confirmed case. If they later test positive by PCR, those will be recategorized as confirmed cases.
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Other Hospital Information: OHA DOES NOT REPORT hospitalization information over the weekend, so the numbers below are the same as Friday’s.
- Patients Currently w COVID-19 Symptoms (who may or may not have received a positive test result yet): 166 (5 fewer than yesterday). Of those, 114 have already received a positive test back.
- Available ICU Beds: 139 (13 fewer than yesterday)
- Other Available Beds: 655 (69 more than yesterday).
- ICU Patients w COVID-19 Symptoms: 47 (6 fewer than yesterday).
- COVID-19 Patients Currently on Ventilators: 22 (1 fewer than yesterday).
- Available Ventilators: 779 (7 more than yesterday).
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Dashboards
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Today’s National Numbers:
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PPE: In the last 24 hours the Emergency Coordination Center has not received any additional Personal Protective Equipment. You can track the history of incoming and outgoing PPE shipments here.
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Additional Brief Updates
- OHA has scheduled a Facebook Live Q&A on school reopening next week. It will be Wednesday, Sept. 2, at 12:30 p.m. Representatives from the Oregon Department of Education and the Early Learning Division will be on hand, as well as State Epidemiologist, Dr. Dean Sidelinger. Sign up to get a reminder for the event on OHA’s Facebook page.
- Do you ever wonder where the 6-foot distancing requirement came from? How rigid a standard that is? Whether it depends on factors such as face coverings, ventilation, indoor vs. outdoor, yelling vs. speaking softly, etc., etc.? There’s an interesting new article with some of the latest findings in the British Medical Journal, entitled “Two Metres or One: What is the Evidence for Physical Distancing in COVID-19” that’s worth checking out. (Sneak preview: it depends.)
What’s Going On In the Counties?
Each Saturday I’m tracking how individual counties are doing, especially now that we’re seeing big increases in cases around the state. The key metrics that OHA is watching are the number of positive test results (per 100K residents) and the percentage of positive test results among all tests administered; the latter will be the more important way for us to see if the infection rate is increasing as a result of reopening and increased testing. (They also are looking at hospital capacity and changes in hospitalization rates, but I don’t have that information by county.)
But first, I want to reproduce the current INTERACTIVE COUNTY DASHBOARD that the OHA has on its website. It shows case counts and total testing by county since the pandemic, scaled to cases per 100,000, so that we can see how the infection is penetrating the various counties, irrespective of their population size. This is what we see as of August 28.
This is a useful view because it allows us to see the infection rate within each county, irrespective of their total populations. Remember, though, that these are CUMULATIVE cases since the beginning of the pandemic. If you look at the rankings, you can see the lingering effects of outbreaks at workplaces and other congregate settings that occurred a month or more ago. It also means that more recent outbreaks may not lead to big changes in the above rankings. These lingering effects are particularly noticeable in the less populous counties.
While the cumulative infection rate is an important metric to look at, I believe an even more important metric is the rate of test results coming in positive. The more you test, the lower that number should be, as you’re not just testing people with clear symptoms of COVID. Anything over 10% is cause for concern. Our school reopening target is 5%.
Here’s a new table I’ve created that shows county rankings by the most recent week’s positivity rate. When you compare it to the previous table. you get a better sense of what’s happening in the individual counties right now. You’ll see that for last week at least, all but the top 12 are hitting the school-reopening standard for positivity.
 Looking at the tables below, you’ll again see increases this week both in the numbers of new cases and in the percentages of new cases for some counties and not for others.
The percentage increases in positive test results may seem inordinately high when working off of a small base or when overall testing goes up rapidly in a county. Again, the more accurate way to gauge the penetration of the disease in a given county is by the percentage of positive test results each week. In order to make the current trends in positive percentages more obvious, I’m again showing you the week-over-week percentages, along with the overall percentage of positive cases for each county since the beginning of the pandemic.
As you’ll see, the proportion of positive test results for the state as a whole is going back down now. This week’s positivity rate is again the lowest it’s been since the end of June.
   
Looking at Age Metrics
Here again are this week’s statewide case, hospitalization, and death metrics by age. Here is updated information as of August 28. The percentages for each category have not really moved at all. You’ll see again that younger people have come to dominate the category of new cases: three-fourths of new cases are below the age of 50.
Again, a slight majority of hospitalizations are among those above the age of 60. Deaths remain dominated by those above the age of 70, but we are continuing to see deaths among people in their 60s and younger.
  Where Are Today’s and Yesterday’s New Cases?
If we put together the positive test results and new “presumptive” cases reported over the last two days, the overall number of new cases is 521. Two-thirds of the new cases are again outside the Portland Tri-County area, with Marion County comprising the largest two-day total. Here is the breakdown by county for yesterday and today:
Baker (2 Saturday)
Benton (5 Sunday)
Clackamas (20 Saturday+16 Sunday)
Columbia (2 Sunday)
Coos (2 Saturday + 3 Sunday)
Deschutes (2 Saturday + 3 Sunday)
Hood River (1 Saturday + 9 Sunday)
Jackson (18 Saturday + 13 Sunday)
Jefferson (3 Saturday)
Klamath (1 Saturday)
Lane (11 Saturday + 9 Sunday)
Lincoln (1 Saturday + 1 Sunday)
Linn (4 Saturday + 5 Sunday)
Malheur (26 Saturday + 22 Sunday)
Marion (40 Saturday + 48 Sunday)
Morrow (2 Saturday + 7 Sunday)
Multnomah (46 Saturday + 36 Sunday)
Polk (3 Saturday + 8 Sunday)
Sherman (1 Sunday)
Umatilla (20 Saturday + 41 Sunday)
Union (5 Saturday + 1 Sunday)
Washington (33 Saturday + 35 Sunday)
Yamhill (12 Saturday + 4 Sunday)
And the Deaths
Oregon’s 448th COVID-19 death is a 66-year-old man in Multnomah County who tested positive on August 26 and died on August 27, at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.
Oregon’s 449th COVID-19 death is a 37-year-old woman in Washington County who tested positive on August 10 and died on August 15, at Providence St Vincent Medical Center.
Oregon’s 450th COVID-19 death is a 59-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on August 1 and died on August 21, in her residence.
Oregon’s 451st COVID-19 death is a 68-year-old woman in Multnomah County who tested positive on August 14 and died on August 21, in her residence.
Oregon’s 452nd COVID-19 death is an 86-year-old man in Lane County who tested positive on August 23 and died on August 26, in his residence.
Oregon’s 453rd COVID-19 death is a 69-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on August 3 and died on August 15, at Providence St Vincent Medical Center.
Oregon’s 454th COVID-19 death is a 78-year-old man in Clackamas County who tested positive on July 23 and died on July 27, in his residence.
Oregon’s 455th COVID-19 death is a 70-year-old woman in Douglas County who tested positive on August 9 and died on August 29, at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.
Oregon’s 456th COVID-19 death is a 79-year-old woman in Marion County who tested positive on August 8 and died on August 25, at Salem Hospital.
Oregon’s 457th COVID-19 death is an 88-year-old man in Washington County who tested positive on August 25 and died on August 28 at Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center.
Oregon’s 458th COVID-19 death is a 79-year-old man in Marion County who tested positive on July 30 and died on August 28, at Salem Hospital.
Additional Graphs:
  Want to See Past Newsletters?
If there was COVID-related information in a past newsletter that you want to go back to, but find you’ve deleted it, you can always go to my legislative website (senatordembrow.com), click on “News and Information,” and you’ll find them all there. Also, if someone forwarded you this newsletter and you’d like to get it directly, you can sign up for it there.
AND FINALLY,
Here again are some resources that you will find useful:
If the above links are not providing you with answers to your questions or directing you to the help that you need, please consider me and my office to be a resource. We’ll do our best to assist you or steer you in the right direction.
Best,
 Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23
email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-986-1723
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301
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